Microsoft Q2 Results Beat Wall Street View, Cloud Business Revenue Slows Down; Shares Down 5%

(RTTNews) - Software giant Microsoft Corp. (MSFT) Tuesday reported a strong second-quarter results, with both earnings and revenues trouncing Wall Street estimates. However, shares slipped 5% after cloud business growth slowed down.

Net income for the second quarter was $18.77 billion or $2.48 per share, up from $15.46 billion or $2.03 per share in the same quarter last year. Twenty-nine analysts polled by Thomson Reuters expected earnings of $2.31 per share for the quarter.

Microsoft said its second-quarter revenues grew 20% to $51.73 billion from $43.08 billion last year. Analysts had a consensus revenue estimate of $50.88 billion.

One of the primary driving factors for the results was the growth in the cloud business. Due to the pandemic, the entire world shifted to a work-from-home ecosystem, pushing the sale of cloud services for the company.

"Solid commercial execution, represented by strong bookings growth driven by long-term Azure commitments, increased Microsoft Cloud revenue to $22.1 billion, up 32% year over year" said Amy Hood, executive vice president and chief financial officer of Microsoft.

The revenue from intelligent cloud services increased to $18.3 billion in the quarter, up 26% from last year, driven by Azure and other cloud services revenue growth of 46%. However, Azure and other cloud services revenues has slowed down compared to previous quarter's 50% growth.

MSFT closed Tuesday's trading at $288.49, down $7.88 or 2.66%, on the Nasdaq. The stock further dropped $15.09 or 5.23% in the after-hours trading.